


No more forever

by Dissenter



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Grief/Mourning, Human Experimentation, Imprisonment, M/M, Revenge, Soul Bond, Suicidal Thoughts, Torture
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-28
Updated: 2016-11-29
Packaged: 2018-06-04 23:21:07
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 7,164
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6680017
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dissenter/pseuds/Dissenter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Losing a soulmate hurts, but life goes on, people change, and sometimes there's a chance for a new soulmate.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. I will wear the green willow

**Author's Note:**

> Soulbonds in this universe are not predetermined, instead they form between people based on their compatibility in a given time and place. Soulbonds are broken either by traumatic change or the death of one of the participants, it's not a nice experience. If people grow apart slowly the bond can fade. If people have lost their soulmate they can move on and find a new one if they don't kill themself.

It didn’t take long for Tony to lose track of time. With no way to see the passing of days, and nothing to mark time except their irregular meal times there was no way to know how long either of them had been there. More than a year, Tony thought, but probably less than four. Yinsen had even less of an idea, he had after all been there that much longer.

They had long since given up on measuring time in hours, days, weeks. Instead the measured it by accomplishments. By the incremental steps they were taking towards their escape. Slowly, slowly, in back corners and stolen moments, constantly terrified that the guards would figure out what they were doing. Would see the hope for escape they kept hidden among the weapons they built. Tony had refused at first. Had said he’d rather die than build weapons for them. They’d tortured him then, drowned him, over and over, then dragged him back to his cell soaked and shaking. Years later and he still had nightmares about it, still couldn’t stand the feel of water on his face.

They’d given up on that when they’d accidentally shorted out the battery keeping him alive. His near death convinced them to change their tactics, dead men build no bombs after all. Only Yinsen’s genius had been able to pull him back from the edge of that one. Yinsen. Brilliant, ruthless, honourable Yinsen. Yinsen who had carved into Tony’s chest without anaesthetic and never even flinched at his screams, who had called him killer, merchant of death, who had saved his life, and held him when he returned from his torture sessions shivering and blank eyed. The cave was bad, worse than anything billionaire playboy Tony Stark could have ever imagined, but at least he wasn’t alone, at least Yinsen was there.

And then he nearly died and the Ten Rings decided they couldn’t risk physical torture anymore. They locked him in a box instead. Alone, in the dark, with no space to move, no space to _breathe_. Total blackout. He didn’t know how long they kept him in there, but by the time they let him out he would have told them anything, to keep from having to go back in there.

When they brought Tony back from that, the look in his eyes sent Yinsen’s heart cold, and it took him by surprise just how much he had come to care. It wasn’t as though Tony was a saint, he was everything Yinsen had accused him of and more, spoilt, careless, creator of weapons that had killed thousands, that had killed Yinsen’s children, his soulmate, his world. He was guilty of everything Yinsen had hated him for and yet… People aren’t simple. He’d thought he hated Tony Stark, the merchant of death, but weeks, months, however long it had been, prisoners together in the dark, and he found that Tony the man, was someone he cared about. He’d talked with him, and sat with him because there was no-one else in the world besides their captors, and he found that Tony was all fire and courage, and unashamed brilliance. Yinsen had seen him spitting and defiant in the face of threats, shaking but unbroken in the aftermath of torture, he had seen him chest laid open, screaming under Yinsen’s hands, and in the end Yinsen found he couldn’t help but care.

They brought Tony back from the box, Yinsen didn’t know how long it had been but it had been long enough to leave Tony hollow eyed and shattered. Yinsen himself wasn’t doing particularly well, but at least he’d had light, and space to move, and some form of human contact, even if it was only with his jailors. Tony had been cut off from all of that. They threw him into their shared cell and as the door slammed and the lights went out, Tony clung onto Yinsen like he was the last solid thing in the world. When Tony had kissed him, soft, desperate and fragile, Yinsen hadn’t been able to find it in himself to refuse, they were both so alone, and desperate for some kind of human contact that didn’t involve pain.

Tony wasn’t sure why he’d kissed Yinsen, except that he was half in love with the man already, and so very desperate for comfort. He’d never known anyone the way he knew Yinsen. Long hours of talking to each other in hushed whispers, because there was fuck all else to do, trust, and desperation, and solidarity in the face of nightmares. And Yinsen knew Tony, in ways that no-one else ever could. Yinsen had ripped open Tony’s chest and laid his hands on his heart, and saved his life as Tony lay screaming, he’d calmed him and held him when he was thrown back into the cell after being tortured, half shattered and hurting, he’d told him truths about himself he hadn’t wanted to hear, that he’d needed to hear, and never once pulled his punches. How could Tony not love him? And so when they brought Tony back from the box, he kissed Yinsen, desperately, frantically, terrified of being left alone in the dark again. He was surprised Yinsen kissed back, he hadn’t really thought he was the type, and besides he was still grieving a dead soulmate. But then, Yinsen covered it well but he needed comfort and closeness as well, and in the end, kisses and sex are just another way of being close to someone.

It honestly wasn’t much of a surprise when the soulbond formed. People trapped under… distressing circumstances, are more likely to connect to each other on that level. Tony read a study once. Apparently it was related to a form of trauma bonding. Besides, while soulbonds weren’t always sexual, physical intimacy of any sort was a quick and dirty way to accelerate the process. Tony had never expected to Soulbond, not before the desert, and the bomb, and the cave, and Yinsen had stripped away the shallow playboy who was afraid to let anyone too close, had exposed that part of him that _needed_ to be notalone so badly. And Yinsen hadn’t let him be alone, despite all the reasons he had to hate Tony, he’d still saved his life, and held him in the dark, and argued with the men who held their lives in their hands for him. And Yinsen wanted to be notalone as well, Tony was smart and he knew how to read people, and there was an aching loneliness inside Yinsen, loneliness, and need for someone to protect, someone he hadn’t yet failed. Yinsen had lost everyone he loved, had failed to protect them, but he had never failed Tony, he’d done the impossible and _saved_ Tony, and that Tony thought, was something Yinsen needed. If they’d met anywhere else, in any other way they would probably have never even been friends, but in that time and in that place, they were everything to each other. Of course they ended up soulmates.

It was funny really, that he still thought of the man as Yinsen. Still called him by his last name. But then again maybe it wasn’t so strange, he’d been Yinsen for so long before they’d soulbonded. Been Yinsen when he carved open Tony’s chest and stuck a car battery in it. He’d been Yinsen when he stripped Tony, and dried him off, and wrapped him in blankets after they’d drowned him, he’d been Yinsen when he tried to defend Tony from yet another session. It just wouldn’t have felt right calling him Ho. Besides, that was what Yinsen’s first soulmate, his wife, must have called him, and Tony wasn’t her. Didn’t want to be her. Tony was himself, so he called is Soulmate Yinsen. Because what they had was different to what the man had with his wife, but every bit as valid and names were important, symbolised, signified, defined things, and things between them had to be defined differently for both their sakes.

The Ten Rings hadn’t taken long to figure out what had happened. They’d been delighted of course, now they could hurt Tony by torturing Yinsen, and not risk him being left unable to work. That had been bad. Not only the pain, but the knowledge that the pain was Yinsen’s, that Yinsen was being hurt because of him. That was bad. It didn’t take much of that to convince him to start building weapons for them. On the more positive side, his compliance meant he had a chance to build the arc reactor to keep him alive. The Ten Rings weren’t all that technologically inclined, when Yinsen assured them it would keep him alive longer, and therefore useful longer, they’d let him get away with it. They hadn’t realized it could be used to power his and Yinsen’s little side project. They never even noticed the side project existed, in amongst the piles of junk, and every day the both of them had prayed their guards wouldn’t figure it out.

Once Tony started obeying, and producing results they’d mostly stopped torturing Yinsen. They’d even let them keep sharing a cell. It wouldn’t do for the soulbond to weaken after all, not when it was such an effective leash on Tony’s behaviour. They’d made love quiet and desperate in the dark when they weren’t in the workshop. Tony never asked if Yinsen was thinking of him or his dead soulmate. Yinsen never asked what the two of them would do when they escaped. They never needed to, Yinsen would never have imagined his wife in a place like this, and Tony would have done whatever Yinsen wanted them to do. It probably wasn’t healthy, but it was real, and solid, and the only good thing in the world for the both of them for those two years.

They’d mostly stopped torturing Yinsen, but every time, the work slowed down, or Tony didn’t produce as much as they thought he should, they took Yinsen in for a reminder. It happened more and more as the project neared completion, and Yinsen made Tony promise to work through the pain if it would get them out faster. Tony should never have listened.

The project, the suit was finished but Yinsen was a mess. In no state to fight their way out. But the suit was finished and in its complete state it was so much harder to hide. Tony had to make a decision, wait and risk getting caught, losing the one chance they had to escape, getting Yinsen hurt worse, or move now with Yinsen unable to fight, barely able to walk. Tony was paralysed by indecision. In the end Yinsen had made the choice for him, using manipulation, and emotional blackmail, and all the trust Tony had in him to push him into doing what had to be done. Yinsen knew he was most likely dead either way, but if they moved immediately at least tony would probably survive. He’d failed one soulmate already, he wasn’t going to drag another down with him.

They’d fought, and Yinsen had done his best to live for Tony’s sake, but it hadn’t been enough, and he died in Tony’s arms.

“Listen.” He’d told Tony, desperate and dying, “Listen, I need you to do something for me Tony. I need you to promise me. I’m dying, and it’s going to be bad. It’s going to be the worst thing you’ve ever felt, worse than the torture or the surgery, worse than anything you’ll ever feel again. But you _can_ survive it. You have to, please. For my sake, otherwise everything that’s happened here will be for nothing. Live, make the world a better place, help people, be Tony, the man I fell in love with, not the merchant of death. Do something good with your life. Remember me. Live. Live and move on, and maybe one day you’ll find someone else.” Tony wasn’t crying, he was too numb with the horror of it all, of how wrong it had gone, but his voice shook as he spoke.

“I don’t want someone else. It wouldn’t be the same, it wouldn’t be you.” Yinsen had just smiled softly at that.

“Of course it wouldn’t be the same, nothing ever is. But that’s not a bad thing. It wouldn’t be the same but it would still be good, it would still be something worth having. I never thought I’d find someone else after my wife died, I never wanted to. But I found you, and I soulbonded with you and I’m so very glad it happened. I want you to live Tony, please.” Yinsen’s voice was half pleading, half demanding, and Tony couldn’t refuse him. Not now.

“Ok”, and now Tony really was crying, “Ok.” Neither of them had said anything else as Yinsen breathed his last. Tony felt the bond snap, felt the raw, hollow empty space where his sense of Yinsen used to be. Then he looked up and saw more guards rushing towards them, and everything went red.

Rhodey found him in the rubble of the destroyed, burned out base. Surrounded by dismembered body parts, still dressed in armour and clinging to Yinsen’s corpse. Tony would have been touched that Rhodey was still looking for him after all this time if he hadn’t felt so broken. Two years Rhodey had said, and Tony hadn’t been surprised but it had felt like longer. A lifetime’s worth of pain and grief and hard earned lessons, packed into such a short space of time. Two years and in the outside world so little had changed, but Tony wasn’t the man he used to be and it was so _hard_ going through the motions.

The next few months he went through feeling utterly hollow. Everything, the press conferences, the company, Obie’s betrayal. It barely registered. But he kept fighting because he promised Yinsen he would, he shut down his company’s arms dealing, built the suit, outed himself as Iron man because he was sick of deals made in the shadows, and he never told a soul about Yinsen, what he had been to him. Pepper probably suspected of course, and Rhodey had found him clinging to Yinsen and drawn his own conclusions, but Tony had never said anything. There was nothing to say, no words that could describe…

But he’d promised Yinsen, so he kept living, tried to do good, and Yinsen was right, it had hurt more than anything he could have imagined, but it was something he could survive. Something he would survive. Yinsen had wanted him to.


	2. Cold haily windy night

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve and Bucky have been soulmates so long Steve can't imagine what it would be like without him. Then he doesn't have to imagine.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The plan is to alternate Steve and Tony's chapters

Steve couldn’t remember a time without Bucky’s strength and warmth wrapped around his soul. From that first day Bucky had saved a scrappy, skinny, stubborn brawler, it had always been BuckyandSteve. They’d been soulbound for so long Steve couldn’t remember what it had been like to be one soul alone.

He’d taken it for granted. Bucky was just a part of him, like an arm or an eye, or a leg, and he’d never thought he could lose him. And then the war happened and people were coming home without arms, without eyes, without legs, with that hollow empty look that accompanies the loss of a soulmate. The last one happened a lot. Battle and blood form strong bonds between people, blood and battle break them just as easy. And Bucky had gone out there, had gone to war and they wouldn’t let Steve follow. Bucky was at war, Steve left behind, and all Steve wanted was a chance for the two of them to stand and fight side by side. Desperation and fear and the need to help his heart and soul brother, to fight for what they both believed in, to bring them both home safe, all those combined to make him reckless and brave, drove him to take the serum.

It worked. Later Bucky told him he’d felt the pain all the way from across the ocean, and Steve believed him, but it worked. It worked and yet they still wouldn’t let him follow Bucky. Captain America was a symbol, was more valuable for propaganda purposes than he ever could be in battle, was too valuable to risk in battle, and so Steve could not follow Bucky. The soul bond wasn’t even a factor, bonds form and break so quick and brutal in wartime and generals cannot afford compassion. Captain America was a symbol and so Steve Roger’s soulmate couldn’t matter, and Steve let it happen until he felt Bucky screaming.

For once Steve came to save _him_. He came to save him and he may have looked different, bigger, strong and healthy in ways that little Stevie couldn’t pretend to be, but his heart and soul were still the same, Bucky could feel him burning with the same fire and determination and heartstrength as Stevie always had, even when he was small and weak and breakable in body. And they still fit, still belonged together, because war, and pain, and unholy experiments could never change what they were to each other. Not ever. Because Stevie still hated bullies and took on fights too big for him, and Bucky was still right there behind him to pull him out of the fire. Stevie might be bigger, and Bucky might wake up screaming, and the both of them had seen far too much of war, but inside who they were hadn’t changed at all.

And so they’d fought together. Wreaked havoc on their enemies, on the biggest bullies in Europe, with brave comrades and friends beside them, and it was always SteveandBucky, and it didn’t matter that the order had changed, that Steve’s name came first now with Bucky in his shadow, because it was all still one word, all bound up together.

Steve had danced around Peggy, and it had been so cute, almost but not quite gathering the courage to ask for a date, and Bucky had smiled because that was just another thing that hadn’t changed from Brooklyn. Bucky hadn’t minded, he’d had more than his share of girls over the years and he knew better than to think a lover could ever come between the two of them. And it wasn’t like he and Steve were lovers. They weren’t that sort of soulmates. Maybe in another time and place they would have been, but it was the 1920’s, and then they were at war, and desire had never been the important thing in their relationship anyway. They were best friends, brothers in arms, and maybe they would have been lovers if it had been expected of them, if it would have been anything other than difficult, but they weren’t, and if they had it would have changed nothing of how they felt for each other. At least that was Bucky’s thinking on the matter, and if Stevie’s opinion had been too radically different their bond wouldn’t be near as strong as it was. He allowed himself a brief dream, where Steve married Peggy, and he married some other girl with long legs and bright smiling eyes, and they all lived together in a big comfortable house in the suburbs with hordes of adorable kids underfoot. Small scrappy ones like Steve, bossy outspoken ones like Peggy, mischievous little charmers like him. Not all dreams come true.

Bucky fell. Bucky fell and Steve felt so so cold. He didn’t feel the bond break, hell, afterwards he sometimes still felt Bucky, but he was so, so cold. Bondshock they called it. Common enough in the war torn times they were living. That faint, ghostly sense of Bucky that he couldn’t quite shake was a phantom link, like the sense of a limb that an amputee could never quite register as missing, and the cold was shock, that’s what they told him. Sometimes Steve wondered if it was more of a premonition, because the ice was so very cold.

Bucky was gone, and Steve’s world ripped to ribbons with him, and even though Steve was screaming inside, Captain America had no time to grieve. Hydra had to be stopped, and Steve had so little of himself left to lose. Maybe he could have survived, maybe he could have played it differently, and come home to Peggy, to life, to medals and a world rebuilding. But when it came to it he just didn’t want to live badly enough. He thought of the future empty and cold and hollow inside, thought of having to smile for cameras and live his life with Bucky’s warmth and strength and love stripped away from him, and he just couldn’t face it. His soulmate was dead, and Steve chose to follow, if he took down the enemy with him then so much the better. He allowed himself a moment’s regret for Peggy who was never his soulmate, but might have been his lover one day, but mostly he was just glad to follow Bucky into death.

Then he woke up. And the pain, and horror, and emptiness of Bucky’s absence finally caught up with him. He felt too hollow to scream.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not so happy with this chapter, but the next one should be better. Steve and Tony get to meet next chapter.


	3. Blow the winds o'er the ocean

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tony is not doing ok, but stuff keeps happening to distract people from that

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I changed the plot of the Iron Man films a bit, to fit with Tony's state of mind.

Two years is a long time. Two years and Obie had managed to sink his claws so deep into Stark industries that Tony felt sick. Two years and the world had believed him dead, had moved on.

Two years had given Obie time to build his defences, weave and strengthen his web. But it had been two years for Tony as well, and he’d had a lot of time to plan. Two years had been more than enough for Tony and Yinsen together to figure out what Obie had done, was doing, would do. Half overheard conversations between their captors, bloody notes exchanged in the dark, and above all cold, ruthless scientific logic telling them that Tony’s capture, the trading of Stark weapons, the whole of this bloody mess was an inside job.

They knew what Obediah Stane was, so when he went home, Tony had smiled, and waved, and hidden his arc reactor under three t-shirts. Rhodey had seen it, but Rhodey was nothing if not loyal, and he’d seen enough of Stane’s changes over the last couple of years that he knew to be wary. Tony had nodded and agreed and signed in all the right places, as he plotted to kill Stane.

He’d kept control of himself. Painted on his plastic media smile, been every inch the Tony Stark who had left. He hadn’t let anyone see the shakes, the nightmares, the scars. He hadn’t told anyone about Yinsen. Pepper and Rhodey knew he was hiding something. Hell, they were bright people, they probably knew him well enough to guess what it was, but the important thing was Stane didn’t know. Obie had never really seen _Tony,_ he’d seen the genius, the playboy, the philanthropist, had seen Howard Stark’s son, had seen a potential obstacle to his plans. But he’d never seen _Tony,_ never really understood him, and so he didn’t see through the lies Tony was spinning him. Didn’t see the blankness behind Tony’s eyes, and didn’t see that Tony wanted his death.

Obie had found out about the reactor in the end. Bribed one of the medics that looked over him after he was found, Tony suspects. He found out, and whatever else Obie may have been he was not a stupid man, he saw the possibilities. He saw the possibilities and made his move, but Tony had not been caught off guard, had seen it coming and switched out the arc reactor. Two years as a prisoner had taught Tony the value of giving your enemies what they thought they wanted, of letting them think they’d won. Tony had been prepared and instead of stealing a stable arc reactor Obie had taken a ticking timebomb.

With Stane gone Tony had put the real arc reactor back in and waited. Three hours later and Stane’s workshop mysteriously exploded, taking Stane with it. Tony used that as ammunition to make people think twice about trying to copy or steal the arc reactor. It explodes if you don’t know what you’re doing was the best security Tony had ever devised. There would probably have been more investigation, but while Obie was busy stealing Tony’s heart (not his soul, his soul was already taken) and using it to build doomday devices, Jarvis had been busy hacking Obie’s files, and leaking them all over the place. Obie’s name had been thoroughly blackened, and when he came to a bad end no-one was particularly interested in digging too deep. When the tabloids find out someone has secretly been selling weapons to terrorists, well everyone expects them to come to a bad end.

Something eased in Tony’s chest when Obediah Stane died circumstances that everyone was very careful not to call suspicious. Yinsen was avenged, Stane would never hurt anyone again, and with Stane gone Tony was finally able to shut down Stark industries weapons manufacturing. No more death falling from the skies with his name on. Not ever. But with vengeance served and Stark industries headed in new directions, Tony just felt numb. Where his sense of Yinsen, brave and kind and brilliant, should have been, was just, nothing, emptiness. He smiled, and talked and played the part in public of course, but when he was alone he drank too much and almost wished himself back in the cave.

When he found out he was dying he couldn’t bring himself to care all that much. He fought it of course, looked for solutions because Yinsen had wanted him to live, but, maybe he didn’t look as hard or as desperately as he could have because all he could feel when he thought of his impending demise was relief. It would finally be over, and even if he didn’t believe in an afterlife the way Yinsen did, it was comforting to think that he would follow him.

He was a dying man, in body and in soul, and honestly he didn’t know how everyone managed to miss the symptoms of bondshock. The fake smiles, the reckless behaviour, the pushing people away because they weren’t who he wanted, the deathwish. He regretted that he couldn’t keep his promise to Yinsen, he tried, and when he couldn’t find a way to save himself, he tried to put his affairs in order. He gave the suit to Rhodey, and the company to Pepper and he hoped that the good he knew they’d do would make up for his failure to keep his promise.

Vanko was… unexpected. An unwelcome interruption in the process of Tony’s slow and dramatic death. It had been interesting talking to him though, he was a smart man, and wasn’t it terribly ironic that a stranger was the only one to see Tony and realise exactly what was wrong with him. Everyone else, Rhodey, Pepper, the whole damn world, they saw him and thought he was just acting out. Rhodey and Pepper suspected the bondshock maybe, and Shield had figured out the palladium poisoning, but Vanko had looked at him and he’d known everything.

“Palladium poisoning. Ugly way to die”, and for some reason Tony had felt the need to be honest with him. Lying to everyone got exhausting after a while, and who was Vanko going to tell, so he’d given a bitter laugh and asked him.

“Do I look like someone, who cares about dying?” Vanko had looked at him with an utterly unsympathetic understanding that Tony had almost found comforting and replied.

“No. You look like someone about to follow their soulmate into an early grave.” Tony was about seventy percent sure that Vanko had been soulbonded to his own father, which was a bit creepy but it did happen. That was why, while Tony didn’t _like_ Vanko, he couldn’t quite bring himself to hate him. Tony knew exactly what drove him, and it was a vicious kind of comfort knowing you weren’t the only person in the world hurting like that.

Then of course Shield had stepped in and all but forced him to live. Maybe one day he’d be able to forgive them for that. He did find it amusing that their trained spy had failed to notice his broken soulbond. Even professionals saw what they expected to see. But they’d given him a way to live, and duty demanded that he take it, so he’d invented a new element, and saved the world from a man hurting just the same way he was, and then he was going to live. Just like Yinsen asked him to.

Pepper had confronted him after, and they’d talked. Truthfully, honestly. He hadn’t spoken about Yinsen. There was nothing to say really. He’d admitted to having lost his soulmate, and Pepper had been kind and supportive, and given him brochures for support groups and therapists specialising in bondshock. Apparently she and Rhodey had been collecting them for a while and hadn’t known how to broach the subject. It hadn’t helped, except in knowing that she cared, that she and Rhodey worried about him. Not that he hadn’t known that before, but it had somehow got lost in the fog of grief that had surrounded his return from Afganistan. The words and the offers to therapy hadn’t helped, not when he wasn’t sure he _wanted_ to get over Yinsen, but the reminder of how much his friends cared had helped. It was nice to have some anchors to life that were living, that weren’t just a promise to a dying soulmate. He would live because Yinsen had asked him to, because Pepper and Rhodey wanted him to, because there was still good that he could do. He just wished it didn’t hurt so much.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tony and Steve get to meet next chapter, I promise. And yes, the big climactic fight with Obie never happened because Tony planned ahead and booby trapped the arc reactor that he let Obie steal. It then exploded. No-one can prove it was Tony, and thanks to Jarvis's hacking no-one particularly wants to. This means Tony never actually did the "I am Iron Man" speech, but he hasn't said he isn't Iron Man either, and anyone with more than five brain cells has their suspicions, since the suit is obviously Stark tech.


	4. Neither coal nor candlelight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve meets the Avengers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Steve's chapter again. It covers about half the first avengers film.

It hadn’t taken long for Steve to start hating his therapist. She talked and talked, with a thousand platitudes, and pop culture references that he didn’t understand, with a thousand assumptions that she refused to examine. He hated her for it, and he knew that wasn’t entirely fair because she wasn’t acting any different than anyone else he spoke to. But then again, out of everyone he spoke to, it was her job to know better.

It would be funny if it weren’t his life. Everyone seems to think the biggest adjustment he’ll have to make is learning to use an iPhone. It’s like they don’t even register how much he’s lost, how much the world has changed, how much his life has changed. His therapist kept wittering on about adjustment, and acceptance, and confronting the past in order to move on, and all he wanted was time to grieve. The final straw came when she started talking about Bucky.

“It’s been seventy years.” She said, “It’s time to move on. Accept the loss and find a way to move forward.” He was actually quite proud of his self-control. He hadn’t shouted, or thrown things, or hit the woman. He’d just stood up slowly, palms flat on the table, and spoken quietly.

“It hasn’t been seventy years Doctor. It’s been six weeks, and I’m not finished dying inside. I won’t be seeing you again.” Then he’d left, and none of Fury’s manipulations had succeeded in getting him back into therapy.

Sometimes he felt like he’d never really left the ice. As though, when they defrosted him they’d left a chip of ice in his heart, like in the old story about the Snow Queen. But his soulmate was dead, there would be no-one to melt his heart with their tears the way Greta had for Kai, so he went through the motions. He got an apartment, he did his shopping, he pretended to smile at the shield agents posing as his neighbours. He spent long hours at the gym, and if he’d still been little Stevie he could have punched the bags until his hands bled and run until his muscles gave out, that might have helped, might have at least given him a way to purge the terrible, unending grief. But he wasn’t, he was Captain America, and no matter how far he ran he could barely feel the tiredness, he was Captain America and the punching bag didn’t exist that could stand up to his full force strike.

He’d been glad when Shield called him in. He’d been glad when Loki invaded, and wasn’t that twisted. But this was something he knew, something Bucky would have been proud of, something to help him ignore his missing heart. He could feel himself coming back to life, with grim purpose, and duty, and an enemy to fight. He could feel the ice melting, and he would have felt guilty, but this wasn’t for him, wasn’t to heal his own bleeding wounds. It was for everyone else, all those other people who were innocent and unbroken, and if he had to put aside his own loss to make sure no-one else had to lose their Bucky then he would. Steve Rogers had wanted to die, but he hadn’t, and here and now Captain America could make a difference, and Bucky would have been ashamed of him if he had turned away from that.

Steve had wanted to laugh at the irony when Loki turned up in Germany. Laugh and laugh until he broke down in tears, because by God seventy years and nothing changed. He didn’t like what he saw in Loki’s eyes. Something mad and broken, and toxic. He didn’t like it, and he didn’t trust it. Loki was a madman, brilliant and broken, and men like that were almost impossible to predict. Loki was up to something, and he was sure the rest of the ragtag group of “extraordinary individuals”, could see it too, so broken themselves that they couldn’t help but recognise it in ally and enemy alike.

Well maybe not Thor. He wasn’t really broken. A bit knocked about perhaps, but nothing beyond his ability to endure. But then of all of them Thor knew Loki the best, he still called the man “brother”, of course he could see the shine of madness in his smile. The rest of them though Natasha, Bruce, Tony, Steve himself, they could see Loki clearly through the cracks in their own souls. It had all of them on edge.

He didn’t know what exactly had broken the others, he wasn’t a psychic, but Bruce was all old bitterness and exhaustion, and Natasha was skill, and control, and lies, and Tony was attitude, and dazzle, and intelligence like razorblades, and Steve knew whole and happy people weren’t like that. He didn’t like it, it was far too much like what he saw in the mirror every morning. It reminded him, and reminders were the last thing he wanted.

He snapped at them. Sniped and picked, and cut at them with words as deep as he knew how because they were everything he hated about his own life, because he was hurting and lonely and there was a high pitched buzzing in his head that _just_ _wouldn’t stop_. He’d lashed out at them in the end, because they were there. Not Natasha, she’d been busy playing her own games with Loki, but Bruce and Tony, who really hadn’t done anything to him except be aggravating. He’d felt a little bad about it, but then Tony had hit back just as hard and it had felt so good to vent his bitterness at someone who could take his anger and throw it back with just as much venom.

The trouble was Tony had been right, Nick Fury was a spy, and he was hiding things. So after Steve backed down he’d gone looking. He hadn’t liked what he’d found, and that anger had fed into the buzzing in his head, had made him aggressive. Of course what he hadn’t realised was that the buzzing was affecting all of them, playing up their fear, and frustration, and petty resentment. It was brilliant really, playing them against each other like that. There had been just enough initial dislike to make everything that followed seem natural and it had only been the sight of Bruce Banner right on the edge of violence as he held the staff that had jolted them all to their senses.

It was funny, for all the things said and done, for all the resentment, and pain those stranger/allies had caused him in the space of a few hours he didn’t hate them. They were among the very few people he’d met since waking up that he hadn’t hated, and wasn’t that sad. That he would freeze and die to protect the helpless innocent unbroken people of the world, but when he spoke to them it was all he could do not to punch them through a wall because _they didn’t understand._ He might not feel comfortable with these people who were just as cold inside as he was, but he didn’t hate them. He understood them too well.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No Steve is not in a good place. Bear in mind that his bond didn't actually break till he woke up, despite the fact that he'd though it had broken before he went down. So he doesn't know why the "phantom bond" has disappeared.


	5. The snows the melt the soonest

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tony meets Steve

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In which Steve is both more familiar than Tony would like, and like nobody else he knows.

Sometimes, Steve reminded Tony of Yinsen. “Take all that away and what are you?” And Steve had probably just been making a jab at the spoilt rich kid’s ego, but it hurt for different reasons than he’d probably intended. It had been a long time since anyone had cut Tony that deep with words. Years now. No-one but Yinsen had ever managed that particular kind of cruel honesty. It was a way of getting to the heart of things, of dragging a person’s flaws into the open and asking why he wasn’t _better._ Of finding the right words to cut a person open to the bone until your pain and theirs were utterly spent, and you could both finally sleep without dreaming.

He was brave too, in more ways than one, just as Yinsen had been. He’d been angry with Tony, and yet still he held his pride in check and _listened_ to Tony and Bruce. And so he went to find out what Shield were hiding. Where a weaker man would have clung to the safety of orders, Steve had instead looked for the truth. Just as Yinsen had abandoned the comforting certainties of hatred and fear and chosen to save Tony instead. Both of them so very brave and honest and principled in ways that Tony sees too many shades of grey to match. The similarities were enough to make him want to cry.

But Yinsen had spoken with a surgeon’s cruelty, to cut away rot, to drain poison, to mend what was broken, cruelty for Tony’s sake, to force him to realise he was more, should be more, than just the merchant of death. While Steve lashed out with the desperation of a soldier, still half lost in a war long since over, striking out at enemies that weren’t there in an effort to dull the screaming pain in his heart. Steve’s cruelty wasn’t about Tony at all, he was just _there,_ a convenient target. Steve was cruel because he hurt too much for a man to bear, and couldn’t help but snap and snarl at the people who got too close. Sometimes Steve didn’t remind Tony of Yinsen at all, sometimes he reminded Tony just a little too much of himself.

Because Tony knew that bleak broken look in Steve’s eyes. He knew it from the mirror, the nights after he’d woken up screaming. He knew that brittle broken edge in Steve’s tone, when he was hanging on by his fingernails and fighting desperately to keep anyone from seeing. Tony knew that Steve had lost a soulmate, a world, that he was holding himself together only for the sake of duty, for the sake of all the beautiful, happy, unbroken people in the world. He could even hazard a guess that Steve resented them (not that he’d ever say so of course), because Steve was like him, a public figure, a face, and he wasn’t _allowed_ to curl up in the corner and cry until there were no more tears in the world. In that way he and Steve had more in common than he and Yinsen ever did. Yinsen was only ever himself, completely, and utterly, and unshakably himself. Tony Stark of Stark industries was an institution, a role that Tony-who-was-Yinsen’s-soulmate had to perform in, the same way as Captain America hero of the nation was the role that Steve-who-was-Bucky’s-soulmate was made to perform, for the sake of all those people who didn’t understand, couldn’t understand and hopefully never would understand.

And Steve was reckless, and headstrong, and stubborn as hell, and it was altogether too much like looking in a mirror, so much so that Tony could hardly bear to watch. But despite all that he still wasn’t prepared to look away, not even for a moment.

Because in some ways Steve was nothing like Yinsen _or_ Tony. In some moments Steve reminded Tony of absolutely no-one but Steve himself, and those moments, Tony was not prepared to miss. Because Steve was _kind,_ in a way that neither Tony nor Yinsen were ever any good at, the both of them too hardened and cynical for gentleness. It was… nice. Tony wanted to see more of it. More of the Steve underneath the still bleeding soul wounds, and untreated ptsd. He was kind, and honest, and _good_ underneath all the pain and anger, and Tony couldn’t help but want to get closer.

It was after he woke up from his one way trip through the void that Tony realised he was in trouble. He probably should have noticed sooner really. From the moment when they first met, and their rough broken edges rubbed together sharply enough to cast sparks, and Tony felt the exhilaration of finally being able to let loose the poison that had been festering in his heart against someone who knew that poison. Knew it all too well, and had their own dose to send right back at him. From that first battle on the helicarrier when they’d fought beside each other, and the co-ordination came as naturally as breathing. From the moment Tony had looked at Steve on the battlefield right before he took the bomb into the sky, and for the first time since Yinsen, felt like he had something to live for.

But he didn’t realise until after, or maybe he didn’t let himself realise until after. After all if he’d let himself realise sooner he might not have been able to do what needed to be done. He woke up and he saw Steve and for once felt something other than the howling void inside of him. It was a spark of interest, of curiosity, of possibility. It was the first time since Yinsen that he’d felt anything like it. “ _Oh”_ he breathed softly as he looked at Steve, battered and bloody from the battlefield, but still so beautiful. “ _Oh.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story grew unexpectedly. I was aiming for four chapters, i'm now at five, and there's at least three more, probably four to go. I need to stop starting stories I don't know how to finish.

**Author's Note:**

> In this AU Tony spent two years in Afghanistan, the terrorists were able to use Yinsen to force Tony to build weapons for him, and yes, soulmates can feel each other's pain.


End file.
